Traditionally, marketing communication practitioners focus on the creation and execution of printed marketing collateral; however, academic and professional research developed the practice to use strategic elements of branding and marketing in order to ensure consistency of message delivery throughout an organization - the same "look & feel". Many trends in business can be attributed to marketing communication; for example: the transition from customer service to customer relations, and the transition from human resources to human solutions. In branding, opportunities to contact stakeholders are called brand touchpoints (or points of contact.) Marketing communication is concerned with the general behavior of an organization and the perceptions of the organization that are promoted to stakeholders and prospect clients through these touchpoints.

Marketing communications is focused on product/produce/service as opposed to corporate communications where the focus of communications work is the company/enterprise itself. Marketing communications is primarily concerned with demand generation, product/produce/service positioning while corporate communications deal with issue management, mergers and acquisitions, litigation etc.